skool's out!
listening to - I gotta feelin' black eyed peas
school's out n time to play!
wait, i asked myself, arki has been my life for the past 5 weeks. now dat dats out of my life, now what? which made me feel the void in my life dat i've been avoiding for so long.
was flipping thru my army sketchbook 4 days ago, n all the memories came back once again. exactly a year ago from today i'll probably be booking in at bedok camp now. i guess with the emptiness i'm feeling in my life now, i'm starting to miss my army bunkmates. one thing about the army is dat you'll never ever be alone, even if u want to. to see these people day n night for one half years n to suddenly stop seeing n talking to them for a long while makes me feel so nostalgic now.
meanwhile, my past 5 weeks in aki have opened me up to see the world in a new perspective. u start to pay attention to details everywhere u go, be it false ceilings in shopping complexes, restaurant decors, material finishes, etc.. n u start to appreciate how design can a way of life. it reminds me of my art days because designing something can be so addictive.
at the core of design lies a problem, n a good design depends on how you will solve it. the addiction comes when you stumble on a very interesting solution, and you find it so interesting that you start to immerse urself in it. u think about it first thing in the morning when you wake, or over breakfast, or when ur in the tube on the way to school, when ur swimming at safra pool, or when ur on the way to the bakery to buy bread for the afternoon snack...
designing is a kind of drug. n the sense of achievement you get at the end of it is a kind of high. dis sem we were working on appreciating space and light. something dats always around u, even now, n its only a week ago that i've begun to appreciate their qualities. it gave me an awareness that every beautiful space derives their beauty from these 2 very simple raw materials. so its really amazing how space and light can be harnessed to move the human spirit, n hopefully change the way we see things.
alot of the focus so far lies in abstraction. analyzing something very rational like the moon, and transforming it into something else. this is where subjectivity comes in, cos every student will take the same word in interpret in totally unique and special ways. this is the beauty of design. its something so abstract that much of it lies in tinges of grey. most of the time, the answer is not A, B or C. often its D,E and F. its never a straight forward task, nor is it an easy endeavour.
one really essential thing about designing is dat you rarely design a project alone. its a social process, where every team member puts aside their own ideas n come together to work on one. as i was working on my friend's idea, i found out how quickly i became very attached to it. slowly, i adapted somebody's else's idea and added mine on top of it. n after awhile, i became so emotionally and mentally attached to the project that it became my driving force behind my work. this is the same force that saw me through the frustrations and lows.
group work can be very painful at times, but i guess this is part and parcel of the whole process. cos its through this that you test urself n push ur limits as u venture into the unknown. its all about getting used to this uncertainty. this is what roots us as designers as we continue to seek out paths in design, and learn something new about urself and your friends each day.
i am still learning.
alvin ong dozed and watched the sawdust trampled night @ 10:05 PM
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